BCNETwork News

March 2006

BCNET Celebrates World-Class Connectivity for British Columbia

On February 07th, BCNET celebrated the completion of Phase I of Project 2010 – the completion and expansion of world-class connectivity for new communities in British Columbia. BCNET’s optical regional advanced network officially arrived on February 07th for the cities of Kelowna, Kamloops and Surrey—now encompassing every university community in British Columbia. Held at Simon Fraser University’s spectacular new Surrey campus, the event marks a significant step in British Columbia’s efforts to boost innovation, research and prosperity in BC.

The Honourable Minister Murray Coell, Minister of Advanced Education, opened the celebration at SFU’s new Surrey campus. “High-performance computing and networking are a vital part of innovation and discovery across many scientific disciplines,” said Coell.

Citing a number of research projects that are underway that already rely on BCNET in the fields of astronomy, physics, health and medicine, Coell talked about the constantly evolving nature of research and education, how they depend on advanced networking and how this helps BC to be a leader in research.

“BCNET ensures that the province stays at the forefront of technology & technological change and helps BC to attract and retain some of the best researchers, educators and innovators in the world.”

Michael Stevenson, President of SFU talked about the magnificent new SFU Surrey Campus and the importance of the connectivity required to make a multiple campus arrangement work effectively.

Stevenson says, “The connection will enable the build-up of some superb new programs at SFU Surrey such as the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Applied Mathematics and new programs in the management of technology. All of these programs have an orientation towards technology and collaboration; therefore, in order to be leading edge educationally, we must have a leading edge infrastructure.”

Thompson Rivers University has recently become BC’s newest public university. Connecting to BCNET has been important not only for the TRU campus, but also for the city of Kamloops and the Thompson Cariboo regions of BC. Dr. Barnsley, President, TRU talked about the history of TRU and how connecting to BCNET will enable TRU to realize their expanding educational vision & research goals and allow the highest quality of student engagement possible.

“Connecting to BCNET will mean superb network connectivity for staff and students allowing such things as: extensive use of WebCT to engage students both in the classroom and distant locations; access to course, library and research materials as well as collaborative research projects,” said Barnsley.

CANARIE has made significant financial contributions to the BCNET expansion to Kelowna, Kamloops and Surrey. Susan Baldwin, Senior Director of Operations for CANARIE explained how Canada has the most advanced research networks in the world and how BC is a significant part of the collaborative research in advanced applications projects that are currently being funded by CANARIE.

“ BC is engaged in six of the nine advanced applications projects,currently being supported by CANARIE, a significant source of intellectual inspiration.”

Michael Hrybyk, President and CEO, BCNET spoke to the value of networks, communities and sharing data and how data is only as good as our ability to share this information.

“Staying connected to each other and to the world is very important. Research & teaching requires bits of data-- it can be tens of terabits, or 10 trillion bits. This data is only good if it is shared with someone; therefore, the value of networks is our ability to share data among faculty and staff and the local and global research and education communities,” Hrybyk added.